I’m so happy to welcome my dear friend and critique partner back to the blog! Ann Diament Koffsky has THREE picture books this season: THE MIRACLE OF MATZAH PIZZA: A BIBLICAL TALL TALE (written and illustrated by Ann, Intergalactic Afikoman, February 10, 2026); WHAT EMMA WROTE: THE WOMAN BEHIND THE WORDS ON THE STATUE OF LIBERTY (illustrated by N. Tarcan, Apples & Honey Press, March 3, 2026); and BLAZING HUMOR: MEL BROOKS IS SERIOUSLY FUNNY! (illustrated by Jason Kirschner, April 7, 2026, Intergalactic Afikomen). Ann shares about her inspiration, as well as stories, creativity, and connection. Welcome back, Ann!
1. STORIES – Discuss the inspiration for your ideas and stories, and share the process about your latest projects.
The Miracle of Matzah Pizza: The inspiration: Boredom! Every Passover, on about day three, I just get bored of eating matzah. It’s an eight-day holiday, so I’m not the only person to have encountered this problem, and recipes for Matzah mac and cheese, matzah kugels, and of course, matzah pizza have been invented to save the day! So at some point, I asked myself: hey, when did this matzah pizza thing first happen? And asking that question gave me the inspiration to write up my own, imagined answer… with a biblical twist.
What Emma Wrote: The Woman Behind the Words on the Statue of Liberty. This book actually started out as an entirely different book. Since America’s 250th birthday was coming, I thought it might be cool to write a story about the first boat of 23 Jewish people who arrived in America, in 1654. I wrote it up as a picture book and submitted it. And was promptly and often rejected. But one editor noticed that I ended the book describing how Emma Lazarus was descended from folks on that first boat and said hey! Why don’t you write about HER? So I did. And in the end, I loved that I got to include in the story a bit about those first 23 Jewish immigrants, too.
Blazing Humor: Mel Brooks is Seriously Funny! For this one, I stole, I mean, I was INSPIRED BY Mel himself! For a fun read, I had taken out his autobiography, ALL ABOUT ME, from the library. Reading it, I was just so charmed by him, his life story, and his mission of using humor to overcome challenges. It seemed a natural to share it with kids.
2. CREATIVITY — How do you showcase your creative side through writing/illustrating and other pursuits?
I’ll select “other pursuits” for this one! I just today got to share my books with the kids at the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County, and man is that a fun thing to do. They were SO adorable, and reading my book to them, and then getting to watch them each pore over their copy of it was the definition of professional nachas!
3. CONNECTION — How do you connect to your young readers through your writing/illustrating, and how do you stay connected to the KidLit community?
Like I said above, I really LOVE doing school visits. Going to schools and spending time interacting with kids is the way I keep a sense of my audience, and what they enjoy and connect with. I also love sharing my coloring pages with kids, and sometimes they’ll even send me photos of the coloring they’ve done with them. That’s always fun too.
ANN’S BIO:
Ann Diament Koffsky is the award-winning author and illustrator of more than 50 books for children, including Ping Pong Shabbat (Little Bee) Different Kinds of Minds with Temple Grandin (Philomel) and the Kayla and Kugel series (Apples and Honey Press).
CONNECT WITH ANN: